Former Hawkes Bay Seafoods company fined $62,000

Former Hawkes Bay Seafoods company fined $62,000, banned
from fishing for three years

12 April 2019

A
commercial fishing company formerly owned by the Hawke's Bay
D'Esposito family has been banned from fishing for three
years and fined $62,000 after failing to report more than
200 kilograms of crayfish.

Esplanade No.3 was
sentenced yesterday following a reserved judgment released
in the Wellington District Court after a lengthy
investigation by the Ministry for Primary Industries
(MPI).

Guilty pleas had been entered earlier to four
representative charges, two of failing to keep or provide
Catch Effort Landing Returns under the Fisheries Act and the
Crimes Act, and two of making a false or misleading
statement in Catch Effort Landing Returns, also under the
Fisheries Act and the Crimes Act.

The offending was
detected after MPI began looking into the activities of the
company in 2014. The Ministry used specialised investigative
techniques involving the use of an undercover officer to
confirm that the skipper and crew of the Nimrod 1 were
fishing illegally.

MPI Manager of Compliance
Investigations Gary Orr says it was discovered that crayfish
were not reported on 36 fishing trips over a period of ten
months.

“That added up to a total of 204 kilograms of
unreported crayfish,” says Mr Orr.

“This sort of
illegal fishing activity is extremely disappointing.
Accurate reporting of commercial catches is critical to
maintaining the integrity of New Zealand’s Quota
Management System. The data obtained is crucial to MPI’s
assessment of the health of a fishery.

“Misreporting
of commercial catches can undermine the ability of Fisheries
New Zealand to ensure sustainable use of fisheries and the
fixing of appropriate catch settings.

Furthermore, the
misreporting of catches may impact on the reputation of New
Zealand’s fisheries management regime.”

Mr Orr
says commercial fishing companies can’t avoid their
responsibilities as a company and need to be actively
monitoring the compliance of all staff.

”This is a
fishery that was scientifically assessed in 2016, finding
that stock levels were 25% lower than desired with a
projected further decline of 6% over the following four
years. The unrecorded removal of fish had the potential to
significantly impact the work being done by MPI and
legitimate users of the resource to restore stock
levels.”

In February 2019, Hawkes Bay Seafoods and its
personnel were fined more than $1 million for the sustained
under-reporting 27 tonnes of Bluenose.

In 1991, Nino and
Joe D’Esposito and the companies they were directors of,
Harbour Inn Seafood Export Limited and Harbour City Seafoods
Limited, were collectively fined close to $1m for
misreporting fish landings that included 574 tonnes of
orange
roughy.

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